One of the wonderful things about being a child is that life is full of simple pleasures and painting, is one of them. Right from creating their masterpiece to being able to show it off once it’s done. Often, when I ask my boys what they want to do their answer is inevitably painting. So I decided to let them get messy, while learning and having fun.
We decided to do our painting a little differently today: with water guns. The boys were so excited when I showed them what we were going to be using to paint with. While I was changing things up, I decided to add a little learning in to the painting fun too.
Things needed for water gun painting
• Water guns (I bought different coloured ones so we could match them to the paint colours)
• Paint (I used acrylic paint & added about 50 % paint, 50% water to make it a watery consistency)
• Paper/Cardboard
• Coloured clips/pegs
• Syringe
• Containers for paint
• Pen/Marker
Getting ready
1. Mix the paint with the water in the containers until you get to a nice thin watery consistency. (I added a teaspoon of water in at a time).
2. Use the syringe to fill the water guns with the paint (make sure the water guns work before you fill them).
The fun part
For Brody, who is 3, we used the water gun painting as a way to practice his colour recognition.
1. Clip the coloured clips/pegs onto the paper, then place onto a black board (you could clip these to a tree, a piece of string or even lay them on the grass). It is messy so be prepared!
2. Lay the water guns with the paint in near to where you will be painting.
3. Let your little one pick a coloured water gun and squirt it onto the piece of paper with the matching clip/peg.
Aiming the gun was great eye activity for his hand eye co-ordination and the action of pushing the trigger to squirt the paint worked on his fine motor skills too. Even Lily, who is 20 months old, gave it a try. Brody was so chuffed with his artwork and loved seeing how he got the colours right.
Jamie, who is 5, just loves his Maths. So we worked on his addition sums with this painting activity.
1. Write out a maths sum onto a piece of paper/cardboard. Put 3 possible answers underneath.
2. Place these on the board/tree or grass.
3. Let your math’s boffin choose his/hers favourite colour and get them ready to squirt the paint.
4. Read out the maths sum and ask them to choose the answer. They then need to aim at the correct answer and squirt the paint onto that number.
He really loved this fun spin on Maths. He had to think before he chose the answer, because he couldn’t take the paint off if he got the wrong answer. This was great for teaching him to take his time when it comes to sums.
So after all the fun and learning we set out the masterpieces to dry. We cant wait to stick these up for everyone to see.
Contributed by Leigh-Anne McHugh of Clamber Club Sports Bryanston
Tel: 082 342 9277
Email: sportsbryanston@clamberclub.com
Website:www.clamberclub.com